LAS VEGAS — Whenever Buster Posey talks about the offensive identity he envisions for the San Francisco Giants, his thoughts tend to cluster around a few key points.
He wants hitters who can create damage. He wants hitters who can exhibit strike-zone discipline. He wants hitters who can limit strikeouts and put the ball in play. But mostly, he wants all of those skills to fall under a broader umbrella. He wants hitters who compete at the plate.
There aren’t many major-league hitters who embody that well-roundedness better than Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. There aren’t many teams that were as adept at creating that tenacious identity than the American League champion Blue Jays, who posted the lowest strikeout rate (17.8 percent), the best strikeout-to-walk ratio (2.11), the highest batting average (.265) and the fourth-most runs per game (4.93) and who fought the Los Angeles Dodgers to the last breath in Game 7 of the World Series.
It’s too simplistic for a team like the Giants to point to a team like the Blue Jays and hit copy/paste. A team’s successful attributes will always be most directly correlated to its personnel. And Guerrero isn’t going anywhere.
But the Giants are hoping that a voice from within the Toronto clubhouse will resonate within their own space. The Giants targeted Blue Jays assistant hitting coach Hunter Mense and finalized an agreement Wednesday with him to join manager Tony Vitello’s staff in San Francisco.
Mense, 41, joined the major-league staff in 2022 and served last season under hitting coach David Popkins, whose motto was to oversee “the most creative lineup at scoring runs in baseball.” The Blue Jays succeeded at it while relying mostly on a core of homegrown players who developed under Mense while he served as Toronto’s minor league hitting coordinator.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. epitomizes the offensive approach Hunter Mense hopes to instill in the Giants as the team’s hitting coach. (Nick Turchiaro / Imagn Images)
Although the Giants haven’t announced the hiring, Toronto GM Ross Atkins confirmed that Mense is headed to San Francisco.
“He’s exceptionally disciplined and very bright,” Atkins said. “He brought those attributes into our process and connected well with our players and made a big difference for us over the years.”
Mense becomes the second addition to the Giants’ staff, along with Jayce Tingler, and both have a personal connection to Vitello. Tingler and Vitello were teammates at the University of Missouri and have remained close friends. Mense played for the Tigers — alongside future Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer — after Vitello had returned as an assistant coach. It’s believed that Mense was influential when Scherzer chose to sign a one-year deal with Toronto before last season. Now that the 41-year-old right-hander has expressed a desire to pitch again next season, Mense’s move to San Francisco might be one more factor that steers Scherzer to San Francisco.
Mense’s chief concern will be to coax more runs out of a veteran lineup that was capable of a franchise-record power surge — they became the first Giants team in the San Francisco era to homer in 18 consecutive games, hitting 38 of them over a span that ended Sept. 6 — but struggled to produce over much longer stretches when the ball wasn’t leaving the yard. They will have little turnover in their lineup, and there’s no changing the stripes of their core hitters — Rafael Devers, Willy Adames, Matt Chapman and Patrick Bailey — who struggle with strikeouts. Strikeouts are also an issue for some of their less-established players like Grant McCray, Tyler Fitzgerald and, to a lesser extent, top prospect Bryce Eldridge.
The Giants also need a fresh voice who can connect with Jung Hoo Lee, who survived his first full season but didn’t make the kind of impact commensurate with his six-year, $113 million contract. The previous coaching staff seemed more concerned with protecting Lee’s psyche than with digging in to help him make the training, swing and approach changes that would allow him to leverage his elite contact skills into high-impact run production. Lee also competed with reduced bat speed last season, perhaps a consequence of adjusting to the 162-game schedule and increased travel demands.
Mense shared some of his philosophies in a Q&A with Fangraphs writer David Laurila published in 2022. Among his core beliefs: A professional at-bat is about more than limiting chase swings on pitches out of the zone.
“The one thing that we have to make sure of as coaches, and as an organization, is that when you’re teaching swing decisions, it’s not about taking the balls,” said Mense, who was drafted by the Marlins and played five minor league seasons plus one more in an independent league before starting his coaching career. “It’s about being aggressive on the pitches you want to hit. I think that’s how good coaches teach it. They give guys the freedom to swing at every single pitch that’s in the zone where they can drive the ball. They’re working in areas where they can hit home runs and produce extra-base hits.
“A good decision is just as much swinging at the pitch that you can drive as it is taking the breaking ball that’s out of the zone. Both weigh heavily, and you could even say that swinging at a pitch that you should drive out of the yard is more important. One will get you deeper in the count and might get you a walk. The other one is going to give you a run if you square it up.”
Mense is expected to team with assistant hitting coach Oscar Bernard, who will be retained from last season’s coaching group. Former hitting coach Pat Burrell also will have a place within the organization but not on Vitello’s staff.